Driven by the Wind: Steven Smiley‘s Windmills may Lead Us out of the Dark Ages of Dirty Power

There‘s a new attraction in Mackinaw City that nearly as thrilling to visitors as their first glimpse of the Bridge: two power-generating windmills thrum the breezes of the Mackinac Straits along I-75 as you drive into town. By the end of the summer there will be five windmills in all, generating enough power to meet the needs of about 1,500 homes.
The windmills are here thanks to the visionary efforts of Steven Smiley and his Bay Energy Services, Inc. of Suttons Bay, which also established the wind turbine outside Traverse City several years ago. Credit for that vision is shared by Mackinaw City‘s town council in partnership with Crystal Flash, Inc., and by Traverse City Light and Power, whose progressive outlook amounts to a courageous stance in an era of deregulation.

TILTING AT WINDMILLS
Courageous because just a few years ago, the big players in the electrical power industry felt that wind advocates such as Smiley were Don Quixotes tilting at windmills with a power source that couldn‘t work on a large scale.
But critics are being proven wrong with improved wind turbines capable of generating electricity that‘s cheaper over the long run than coal, nuclear or natural gas, and certainly far less destructive to the environment.
“Wind power is very unusual for Michigan but it‘s become very common in places like Germany and Denmark,“ Smiley says. “Germany has installed $6 billion in windmills in the last five years and some regions are getting 20 percent of their power from the wind. There‘s also one county in Denmark that generates 130 percent of its power from windmills. I think the potential is unlimited.“

MACKINAW CITY
The two windmills operating in Mackinaw City cost $950,000 each and generate 950 kilowatts (kw) at peak capacity, compared to the 600kw windmill in Traverse City.
Smiley estimates that each turbine will produce 2 million kilowatt hours per year. Since the average home uses 6,000 kw hours per year, that means that each turbine generates enough power for 330 homes.
Result? Mackinaw City‘s power comes directly from the windy Straits -- completely clean, renewable power. The citizens of Mackinaw City can rest easier knowing that they aren‘t contributing to global warming: no coal plants fouling the skies with sulphur dioxide and hydrocarbons; no taint of acid rain and dead lakes; no part in the greenhouse effect that‘s melting the earth‘s ice cap, raising the oceans, contributing to storms and droughts and plagues of insects... In one bold move, Mackinaw City has become the most progressive community in Northern Michigan in the vanguard of renewable energy.

PLAYING DIRTY
So why aren‘t other communities scrambling to set up windmills of their own?
“We‘re competing against old dirty power sources that are already on the grid,“ Smiley says. “For them that means that producing power is just covering the cost of coal and not the effect on the environment. It‘s really an unfair competition.“
In the short run, it costs less to keep shoveling coal into the existing power plants of northern Ohio and Indiana than it does to set up hundreds of windmills along the Lake Michigan coast.
Another factor is deregulation. Most electric power utilities aren‘t building new power plants at present because it‘s cheaper just to shop around for electricity from other sources; ie. coal and nuclear power plants which are already in operation.

THE LONG VIEW
Dirty power schemes such as coal, nuclear and natural gas don‘t take the long view on costs, however. When the long term is considered, wind power is the cheaper alternative.
A nuclear power plant, for instance, costs hundreds of millions to build and to decommission when its useful life is over. As an example, even the former Big Rock nuclear power plant in Charlevoix -- the smallest plant in the nation -- had a five-year decommissioning budget of $300 million.
Smiley notes that the $300 million spent just to clean up the Big Rock site could purchase 300,000 kilowatt hours per year in windmills, compared to the 65,000 kw‘s that Big Rock generated.
That‘s not even counting the unknown costs and perils of burying spent nuclear fuel rods with a half-life of 50,000 years.
By comparison, a windmill has a 25-year lifespan with all of its power provided free from the planet itself. Factor in the installation, upkeep and maintenance of a windmill and power can be generated at a cost of 5 cents per kilowatt hour, or 3 cents per hour in light of future discounts -- a rate equal to that of existing ‘dirty‘ power plants.
As for decommissioning costs on a windmill, there are none. Smiley notes that scrap metal dealers will gladly take down old windmills and recycle them free of charge.

TAKE A CHANCE
There are similar examples with coal and gas-powered plants where the long-term cost savings on wind power makes for an attractive alternative. Today‘s wind turbines produce 10 times as much power as the early models set up in places such as California‘s famous windfarm on the border of Nevada.
Even with those benefits the major utilities have been slow to act on adopting wind power, again in part because deregulation has discouraged the development of new power sources. “We need a market for wind power on a long-term basis,“ Smiley says. “Without a market, you can‘t finance it and no one‘s going to take that risk.“
Notable exceptions have been Traverse City Light & Power which established a wind turbine for customers willing to pay a “green“ premium rate to support renewable energy.
Mackinaw City‘s wind turbines are owned by Crystal Flash, a forward-looking energy company from Grand Rapids. Crystal Flash recently sold its gas stations in Northern Michigan in order to get more involved in sustainable energy projects such as wind power and oil recycling.
“There‘s lots of potential in Michigan and we‘ve been working with a number of new projects ranging from three to 20 windmills,“ Smiley says. He adds that two upcoming wind projects will be located in southern Emmet County and (if approved) near Ironton on Lake Charlevoix.

WIND ODYSSEY
Smiley was living in Alaska 20 years ago when he became interested in renewable energy. He began working with Danish groups on several windmill power projects, moving to California in the early ‘80s to follow the development of wind power. Throughout the ‘80s, he made frequent trips to Denmark to work on wind projects along the breezy coast of the North Sea. He moved to Northern Michigan in the late ‘80s, establishing Bay Energy Services, Inc. Besides wind and solar power, the firm offers energy planning and design services.
These are exciting times for the wind power movement: advances in technology now make it possible for 3-to-10 windmills to provide all of the electricity needed for rural townships. And there are huge expanses of the United States which are subject to near-constant winds including the coast of the Great Lakes and thousands of square miles of the Great Plains (North Dakota has been called the “Saudi Arabia of the wind power movement“).
Smiley says that major utilities are beginning to take wind power seriously. Oil, coal and gas companies are already experimenting with wind for future revenues.
“It‘s becoming an international debate over who‘s going to control wind power, especially in Europe,“ he says. “A lot of people would like to see local, regional or cooperative ownership of windmills to spread the benefit of the wind. It‘s seen as a democratic force; just as the sun covers the whole earth and the wind is available to everyone, then so too should the benefits be available to everyone.“

DOWN ON THE FARM
Harvesting the wind may become a new cash crop for farmers of the 21st century, since the biggest problem facing the industry is finding sites for windmills. Windmills must be located 1,000 feet apart so that they don‘t “steal“ energy from each other. Only farmers have that kind of land.
“Most windmills in Denmark are owned by farmers or co-ops,“ Smiley says. “Farmers here should be the first to buy into windmills.“
First, however, there are problems to overcome before farmers can begin reaping the wind. Farmers must be able to come up with about $1 million for the purchase of a wind turbine; must be able to negotiate sales of their energy with giant electric power utilities; and must be able to work with windmill suppliers, most of which are overseas.
But, with money to be made, these problems are not insurmountable. And with people all over the planet waking up to the horror of the consequences of global warming, the clean power of the wind is sure to keep increasing in its velocity.
Smiley notes that six million tourists will pass by Mackinaw City‘s five wind generators each year. Each one of them is an ambassador and a witness to a better way to energize our homes. And like the wind itself, each visitor to Mackinaw City will carry the dream of clean, endless wind power to their own town. View On Our Website